


champagne

by deniigiq



Category: Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Black Tie Event, M/M, Parties, Unrequited Crush, fancy shit, gala - Freeform, is a form of love?, lying, sure why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Johnny did not gape, but it was a close thing.“You’re mixing a Tom Ford with fuckin’ Bogo flipflops?” he blurted out.Stark’s eyebrow arched.(Johnny lies for Peter to Tony Stark.)
Relationships: Peter Parker/Johnny Storm
Comments: 14
Kudos: 251
Collections: Team Red Server Valentine's Day Pop





	champagne

The glasses were arranged in a tower with their stems forming geometric lace like a kaleidoscope. There were flowers in some—fuchsia and white miniature roses with their leaves soaked in champagne. The bubbles around them kept them buoyant as they clung to the lips of their glasses.

They were mesmerizing.

“Johnny Storm.”

He tore his gaze away and found himself staring into a face. Tony Stark was a handsome dude; unfairly regal-looking despite the salt and pepper hair. His beard was shaved impeccably. He was wearing…flip flops?

“My eyes are up here, big guy.”

Johnny did not gape, but it was a close thing.

“You’re mixing a Tom Ford with fuckin’ _Bogo_ flipflops?” he blurted out.

Stark’s eyebrow arched.

“You know your suits,” he said.

“At _least_ do a boot,” Johnny said. “A boat shoe, a sneaker—I wouldn’t say no to Jordans with the blue—but _thongs_ , Doc?”

The arched brow on Stark’s face was punctuated with a growing smirk.

“You know, no one’s called me ‘doc’ since I earned the damn thing,” he said.

Johnny blinked at him.

“So a boot,” he translated.

Stark grinned.

“Can I borrow you for a moment?” he asked.

Johnny took a moment to survey the room and found it full of witnesses. Sue had noticed him from the other corner where she was protecting Reed from himself and Dr. Banner. She locked eyes with him and glanced at Tony Stark who must have caught onto what Johnny was doing. He waved with all his fingers. Sue squinted at him, then gave Johnny a curt nod.

“Sister says yes,” Stark hummed. “Is that a go-ahead?”

“I usually wait for two out of three, but yeah, okay, I’ll bite,” Johnny said. “Take me away, foul sir.”

Stark laughed and starting making his way back through the crowd to one of the far hallways. Johnny jogged after.

Stark’s lab was the stuff of legends. There were hologram screens and people puttering around, even late enough that the windows were all dark.

Stark led him through the maze of machinery to an elevator. He gestured into it.

“After you,” he said.

Johnny studied him for a long moment, then stepped in. Stark got in after him. The doors closed.

“So, Mr. Storm,” Stark said, holding out a tumbler of something allegedly non-alcoholic, but somehow still amber and free of carbonation. “It’s my understanding that you know people in the city.”

Johnny accepted the glass.

Yeah, he knew people. Actors, actresses. Mob bosses, weapons dealers. The whole F4 kept track of them as they kept track of Dr. Doom and the like.

Stark set down his glass and asked if he knew the local vigilantes.

Daredevil, Jessica Jones, the ‘Immortal Iron Fist.’

Johnny took a sip.

“What if I do?” he asked.

“What if you did?” Stark volleyed back.

He wanted someone. Something. Possibly something that the F4 had and that he thought he could get if he went for the weakest link. The whiskey didn’t taste like whiskey. It tasted like wood smoke and apple and something once sweet, now bitter.

“If I did, then I’d wonder what you’d be taking me upstairs and handing me drinks for,” Johnny hummed.

“Touché.”

“Name?”

“Unknown.”

“Surname?”

“Unknown.”

“You asking me to hunt down a ghost, Doc?” Johnny asked. “Is that what you think we do these days? Did you miss the giant horned dragon last week?”

Stark huffed a laugh away from Johnny.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Didn’t miss your little friend, either.”

Friend?

“You know, Mr. America himself.”

Cap? No, Cap had been very busy last week stealing microphones and murmuring into them ‘I fucking quit.’

Dragons did that to a guy. Johnny didn’t blame him.

“I’m afraid that’s your ballpark, not mine,” Johnny said. “The only flag I know is the—”

“The itsy, bitsy spider, no?” Stark finished for him.

The glass in Johnny’s hand suddenly felt like ice. Stark turned back around and watched him. The buildings outer lights illuminated the window and threw a soft blue glow around the edges of his shoulders.

Johnny set the glass down on the nearest flat surface.

“I think I’d best be going. Tell Mr. Ford I’m sorry for what you’ve done to his suit,” he said.

Stark’s shoulders rose and then fell with a sigh.

“Your sister knows already,” he said just as Johnny turned around.

Johnny’s breath stuttered.

“She said it’s not her business who you make time with,” Stark said. “And I get that. I was young once, too, you know.”

Spidey’s laugh echoed through Johnny’s ears. It sounded like a soft bell. One tied to the handle of a used bookstore full of light and old shelves.

He swallowed and located smile in his pocket. He turned it back onto Stark.

“Sorry to say, but I think you’ve got the wrong idea, Mr. Stark,” he said. “We aren’t together.”

A pause.

“Sue did tell you, didn’t she?” Johnny asked.

An even longer silence.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” Johnny said.

“I’m sorry, I must’ve misread—”

“It’s cool, folks do,” Johnny said. “But man, if you’re lookin’ for Spidey, keep lookin’.”

Stark’s sharp gaze snapped back up.

“He’s not like the others, Johnny,” he said.

“Mm. I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Johnny said. “Why do you want him?”

Nothing.

“Avengers?” Johnny tried.

Still nothing. Stark’s lips were sealed. Hm.

“You realize I’m gonna tell him you asked after him, right?” Johnny asked.

Stark let his shoulders relax; he swept a hand through his hair.

It was funny how this wasn’t even the first time that it had been brought up. It was funny how this wasn’t the second or third or fourth or fifth.

Johnny almost felt sorry for the Avengers.

It had to be tough to be aging in this climate, where all eyes were on you, and retirement was but a twinkle in some cruel god’s eye.

Cap was more agitated than ever. He was approaching Done. Everyone could read it on him, even the most hardcore of his fans could admit that Steve Rogers’s possibly-permanently young face looked more lined than it ever had.

It wasn’t the grind, it was the grief.

Johnny felt that.

The grief was the part that got him, too, and Cap was carrying around at minimum, three times Johnny’s own load.

The closer he got to ‘out of the game’ the more anxious the other big names became. It wasn’t clear where he was going. Cap played all his cards closer to heart than any poster or entertainment special would have you think.

No one knew what Cap was thinking, and Johnny personally thought that he liked it that way.

These days, he was flanked on both sides by men with muscles thicker than kids’ heads. He seemed happiest crushed in between them, and Reed suspected, like a chatty aunt, that there was more than one reason for that.

Sue, on the other hand, told him to try to hide his crush on Cap better; the kids were going to have questions at this rate.

Johnny liked to lean into that and ask Reed when he was filing for divorce, but that snark came with danger.

Specifically the danger of Reed and Sue and Ben dropping what they were doing to squint at him in supreme judgement.

They didn’t talk about Peter.

It had been ten years.

God, had it really?

How had time passed so quickly?

Johnny took the elevator back down to the atrium where he found the room slightly more empty than it had been. Some folks had left. The remaining had split off into three main groups for chatting. One of them was centered on Clint Barton telling a story that was demonstrated by him aiming his own knuckles at his face.

That was clearly the best place in the house to be at the moment, but Sue and Reed were talking to Ben off in one of the corners by the table with the champagne glasses and Johnny knew where he belonged.

He joined them and Sue set down her glass as he did.

“Stark?” Reed asked.

“Outside,” Johnny told him, holding Sue’s gaze.

“Really? Again?” Reed puffed out into the night air.

Johnny glared at Sue. She shrugged.

“I didn’t promise anything,” she said. “He asked if you knew him; I said yes. I think we all know why he wants him.”

“I’m not stabbing Peter in the back,” Johnny sniffed.

“You ain’t stabbin’ anyone,” Ben told him. “Stark’s just extendin’ an offer, and anyone who knows jack knows Pete’s gonna tell him to shove it.”

That was true.

It still felt sticky.

“Who’s dropping out?” Johnny asked the other two over his shoulder. “Is it Cap?”

“Banner,” Reed said. “Allegedly. Obviously no one will say.”

Damn. Johnny hadn’t seen that one coming.

“Cap’ll go after him, probably,” Sue said. “It’ll be dominos from there.”

Would it?

“I thought there were new Avengers?” Johnny asked.

“Some,” Reed said. “Says Hawkeye, anyways.”

Ah. That explained the knuckles. Well, they sounded like fun.

“His mentee’s going for it,” Ben said. “God, imagine a team lead by Barton’s legacy.”

Johnny would join it.

He got flat looks all around and shrugged.

The kids screamed and held everyone at Nerfgun-point upon reentry to the building. It was Johnny’s sacred duty to tackle them and turn the tables into a bedtime hostage situation.

The kids were clingy—god they were clingy. And Johnny loved them, he did, but he could _not_ spend another night crunched between them on a twin mattress. His back wasn’t what it used to be and them little suckers were getting _big_.

How their elbows and knees could possibly get sharper was a mystery that even Reed’s giant brain couldn’t solve.

Frankie didn’t care.

He dug fingers into Johnny’s collar and asked why he smelled like apples just as Val wrapped her boney arms around Johnny’s own right one and squeezed.

“Because me and Tony Stark had a chat, and when you chat with Tony Stark, he picks the drinks,” Johnny hummed, rolling Frankie off his shoulder and into the pile of covers on his bed.

He addressed Val. She beamed up at him with a gap-toothed smile.

“Apple juice,” she said.

It was as good a guess as any.

“Sure thing, bub,” he said. He shook her over her bed and she giggled. Little sucker was strong. Johnny dug his free hand into the gaps in her ribs and she shrieked.

“I’m Spiderman,” she told him as she swatted his hand away and tried to regain her grip.

Johnny huffed.

“You ain’t,” he said.

“Are to.”

“Are not.”

“Are to,” Frankie joined in. “I’m Spiderman II.”

Good god, Peter. Why must you haunt this household like this?

“You’re not, you’re eight, it’s bedtime,” Johnny said to immediate outrage.

A tough audience these guys were. They kept him on their toes.

“Do a trade,” Frankie demanded.

“Do I look like Daredevil to you? No, no. No deals. Bed,” Johnny snipped.

“You could be DD,” Val piped up.

“How dare you,” Johnny scolded. He flopped her onto the bed, and, in her moment of weakness, snatched away his arm. “Daredevil is what we in the business call an as—”

“Johnny.”

Sue’s face was deadly at the door. Whoops.

“I said nothing,” he said with the vocal support of the local youths.

“Uh-huh. Good night.”

That was a dismissal if Johnny had ever heard one. He hopped skipped and jumped out of the room.

His own room felt strangely empty as he picked his collar open with one hand and fumbled with his phone with the other.

The last message he’d sent was dated nearly a month ago. He felt a little bad about it.

**JS:** heya pete

**PP:** HEY FRIEND

Oof. That was fast. Was this a normal manic night or an energy drink-inspired manic night?

**JS:** got something for you

**PP:** please tell me its nuts

**JS:** there is a joke there that I need you to know that I see. I am witnessing it. But I am not touching it because we gotta talk for real.

**PP:** who are they? I’ll handle them

Aw.

**JS:** TS asked me about you.

**PP:** oh

**JS:** yeah

**PP:** this again?

**JS:** yeah

**PP:** alright I’ll write my answer on his windows, you think red, blue, or yellow is better? I’m out of white paint and Wade’s using the gold on DD’s horns.

**PP:** lol he’s calling him a trophy wife

**PP:** get it? Because he’s

**JS:** none of you are as funny as you think you are, I need you to understand this

**PP:** ☹

**JS:** ok but for real. They want you pete. What are you gonna do?

**PP:** ?? what I always do, boo

**JS:** which is?

**PP:** 😊

**JS:** peter please these are my coworkers

**PP:** 😊 😊 😊

**JS:** just be careful okay?

**PP:** sure thing

**JS:** asking for real

**PP:** saying for real ❤

Johnny set his phone down on the side table and dropped heavily onto the mattress.

It would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> art by the lovely **@viokio** find them on tumblr!


End file.
